Look Where We Are
by mellode
Summary: The ride back home takes longer than she remembers. — Paul/Rachel


**Look Where We Are**

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_I will admit it  
__If you admit it  
__It's harder than we both thought  
__It's easier to fall apart  
__Look where we are_

—Flattery; Aly & AJ

.

She rushes through school. It's not smart despite what her father tells everyone who will listen on the rez. _She_'s not very smart, either, because there are friends that could have been made, boys that could have been forever, and places to see.

Rachel just wants it done with. She's not perfect so she doesn't make every A (she's not _Becca_ who gave up that scholarship she so dearly wanted) but she's good enough. She's hardly pretty but she gets a few looks here and there and she's okay (she's not Jake's Bella, that little girl she remembers with the redred cheeks and bright eyes).

Sometimes, when she's in her tiny dorm with her roommate that she hardly knows and a bed that's so lumpy, Rachel thinks she just wants to go home.

She does. Her diploma sits in the front seat next to her, an old cassette barely pinning it down with her bags thrown in the back. She drives with the windows down (her papers flutter everywhere but she doesn't _care_) and a pair of sunglasses are perched on her nose.

It's when she's putting in gas and sees her reflection that Rachel laughs. She looks like a prima donna, just without all the layers of makeup.

Her sunglasses cost $8.75 at Wal-Mart. Rachel dumps them in the trash anyway.

.

The ride back home takes longer than she remembers. So does pulling into the driveway (and where's that old truck she'd so despised, anyway?), taking out the keys, and stepping into the house she'd so wanted to get away from.

There's a musty smell in the air that reminds her of brown—she doesn't know why. Brown is their home, she had thought when she was younger; their walls were white, yes, but the furniture, the cabinets, floors were all brown.

Rachel hates it. (Her mother's favorite color was brown—the softest shade that resembles her father's eyes.)

She calls out to her father, smiles at him even though he's still in that wheelchair (he won't ever get out, but she hopes in that way kids do) and scolds him for the piles of empty pizza boxes on the dining table. The same dining table that's been there since mom died.

Rachel cleans the house from top to bottom. She doesn't want to think about her father whose eyes are glued to the TV, about her sister who's living the good life, about her long dead mother, or about her brother that ran. (She doesn't want to think of Bella Swan and her redred cheeks either, but she can't help but hate her a little.)

.

She wants to say she can remember every second of their first meeting, of how his eyes bore into her with all the intensity of a thousand suns, and then some.

She can't and Rachel is pragmatic to begin with; poetry isn't her thing. And even if it were—she wouldn't describe his first look at her as 'intense'… She rather thinks Paul looked constipated and yet elated.

_(It's a funny thought. She laughs, now, and he stares at her as if he's fallen in love with a loon. He has.)_

But for everything that comes _with_ Paul, she finds that she doesn't mind it all too much. For one, her baby brother comes back (and she still, still finds herself disliking Bella Swan just a little more than she should) and for another, everything seems brighter. Better. And the backseat of her car isn't so empty anymore (Jared insists on double dates; Rachel humors him).

The werewolf thing throws her off. It's not _normal_. But she's seen Paul shake, seen his face (and his eyes, such _green_ eyes that she shouldn't like because it says something about his parentage that the elders don't like) when Jake pushes just a little too much. It's okay, though, it's _okay_ like nothing else ever has been—

Because this is _real_. She doesn't have a half-life like Leah, isn't in love with a toddler, and she's still got some remnants of humanity left.

(Plus, Paul gets her new sunglasses. The tag says they're a buck-fifty. She thinks they look a lot better than the old ones.)

.

Paul does too much.

She doesn't hate him for it but it gets overbearing at times.

Too much, she tells him over the candlelit dinner. Too much—where's _you_?

He laughs, awkwardly, and the sleeves of his suit are too short and suddenly Rachel hates what he's trying to become. Trying to pass school, he says, and she understands. Rachel shakes her head at him.

You'll pass, and you'll be fine. That's all I want. Really.

He doesn't believe her, not really, but her words are enough to get them out of the stuffy restaurant (they skip the bill; Rachel doesn't mind, it's not like anyone here even knows them—and she finds that she wouldn't care even if they did). She forgets that he's barely seventeen, not even an adult, and lets him hold her hand.

She feels…not like a princess. It's not raining, no, but the moon isn't out and shining either. It's cloudy, and her dress is ugly (it's from high school, the last dance she's ever gone to) and his sleeves are too short but they're laughing and it's like they're just two kids out having fun.

.

—_and in that moment, I swear we were infinite_.

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**AN**: This…has been sitting on my computer for the better part of a year. And the thing about Paul's eyes being green—for the life of me I can't remember which fic I pulled that from. It's a really minor detail about his parentage but I didn't come up with it. I just can't remember who _did. _Geh. Messed around with the ages a bit too. Makes it flow better or something :D

**Disclaimer**: Stephanie Meyer owns the characters/situation/etc. Stephen Chbosky owns that last line of the drabble—meaning that I did not come up with that brilliant sentence so don't sue because of it. It'd kinda suck.


End file.
